1. Write Like You Talk

Have you ever read an article that felt like a chat with your friend? That’s the magic of writing like you talk in real life.

Your readers are the same people who surround you in real life. And there’s no sense in writing for them in some specific form. Forget formalities.

Imagine that you’re inviting some of your readers into your living room for cozy storytelling. Seriously, let your imagination replace your home screen with a person who is truly interested in what you’re talking about.

It would upgrade your storytelling hundreds of times, and it’s probably the easiest way to forget about all the complexes.

Stop thinking that Elon will read your article. If you’re just starting out, then in most cases, nobody would give a f*ck about you and your pieces of writing.

But there’s also nothing unusual, this is the journey of starting and exploring something new. When I first wrote an article, it got around 60 views — not that good, some of you may say. But it was one of my biggest achievements in life. Just think of it: 60 real people just read my first article, that was definitely the worst one in my career.

One more thing that I want to discuss with you is creativity. Creativity is obviously great and I love when I see how people come up with some creative beginnings, conclusions, endings of sentences, etc. But in most cases, Medium isn’t a library of fictional books.

It focuses on delivering some of the best insights from the best minds all over the world. We don’t wanna sit here and read Shakespeare. We obviously want to get something useful, rather than enjoy the process of reading an article itself.

You don’t always have to be as creative as possible. Just write. That would be my biggest suggestion for today.

So yeah, be yourself, write like you talk, and so on. It’s pretty easy to understand, but pretty hard to implement and we all know that.

If you don’t have anyone to imagine, start with me! I would always love to read your pieces of writing and will probably be able to keep the dialog going!

Phooey, now that I’m done with this section, let’s explore how to turn your mistakes into gold!

2. Turn Mistakes into Gold

Typos? Awkward sentences? So what?

They happen in everyday life and instead of panicking, let’s use them as learning moments.

Remember that you don’t have to be perfect. If you want to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ (like I always do) then do it. Don’t listen to Grammarly that wants your text to be perfect and shiny. It shouldn’t be.

I hate when Grammarly or some other extensions want to remove the words ‘literally’, ‘really’, etc. This is the way I talk and the way I want to be not perfect.

In fact, I would even suggest you make mistakes on purpose. In the current world, where we are at war with AI, you need to find a way to express yourself, not the cold information itself.

AI wouldn’t be able to make mistakes in the way that we can, it wouldn’t be able to come up with a new word that everyone else would understand, and it wouldn’t add some parasites to your text.

Especially when Medium publishes new rules on the market saying that they will boost ‘real-person’ articles and remove all the AI-generated trash.

And trust me, it’s pretty easy to understand if the article is generated by AI or not. It’s also pretty easy to understand if you’re writing for the professors in universities or for ‘us’.

So, to be truly imperfect and be proud of it, you need to share all of your mistakes with your readers. Sounds crazy, right?

You can say:

I’m an introvert, I’m afraid of making even a single mistake, how I can share it with the large audience?

And I would answer — people love to see how honest you are. As I mentioned earlier, everyone makes mistakes, and you shouldn’t be afraid of making them.

In fact, sharing your mistakes with the audience would make you even more proud of your mistakes. It’s like when you get lost in some battle, but at least, you’ve been in this battle for a while.

We all know the phrase, “It’s not about winning, it’s about participating.” It doesn’t matter if you made zero mistakes or tons of them; you still participated and improved in some parts.

By the way, I’ve been through all of this stuff myself. When I bought a new, really expensive monitor, I was afraid to spend money on something that I wouldn’t enjoy enough. What if it’s as big as I want? What if I don’t need to overpay for 4K instead of 2K resolution? And so on.

In short, I’ve been in the cage with my own mind and have been fighting with it for a while. And it’s only an example, I’ve had that in almost every sphere of my life and every uncertain choice would be like hell to me.

So, the best way to win over it is to make constant mistakes. Even if I spent lots of money on this monitor and haven’t enjoyed it enough, I would now be able to identify what I truly need in the monitor and what I don’t. Even if I make a mistake once, I will never make it twice because of my imperial experience.

In fact, it’s the best monitor that I’ve seen in my life, and I really like it!

3. Connect with the Reader’s Inner Child

Simply put, it’s all about finding something unique in the way you present your thoughts and the way you make others listen to what you’re saying, writing, etc.

As we’ve talked before, you should write like you talk and imagine that you’re talking to a real person, instead of the computer screen. The reader should understand that he’s not talking to a computer screen as well.

It’s very, very subjective, and I highly suggest you dive deeper into understanding your main audience. In other words, create a portrait of your ‘usual’ reader, including how he or she looks, the average age, and the main interests.

After this analysis, you’ll be able to write specifically for these groups of people. Use some words that will resonate the most, use a specific structure of writing, and so on.

But don’t overextend yourself, remember that new people can come to your profile and will be interested in this topic as well. They can be very different from the portrait that you draw in your mind, so keep that in mind

Anyway, the main thing is that you need to find this inner child inside of your readers and explain to them that you’re the real person, who uses metaphors and anecdotes. It’s not about dumbing things down; it’s about engaging the heart and imagination.

Only by embracing children in ourselves, we be able to become the real adults. The inner child is like your real soul, not the one that you’ve discovered and definitely not the one you show others.

We’re not the same, so you’ll need to find something that works for you and that can truly impress your readers.

I’m not sure if I have found it, but I always experiment as much as possible. The same principle should work for you. Write one article with one tone of voice, the second one with another, and keep doing that until you see some results.